Saparmurat Niyazov

Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov (19 February 1940-21 December 2006) was First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan from 21 December 1985 to 16 December 1991, succeeding Muhammatnazar Gapurow. He then served as President of Turkmenistan from 2 November 1990 to 21 December 2006, preceding Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Niyazov was Turkmenistan's first post-Soviet strongman, creating the new Democratic Party of Turkmenistan and outlawing the Communist Party. He served as President until his death in 2006.

Biography
Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov was born in Gypjak, Turkmen SSR, Soviet Union on 19 February 1940, the son of a Red Army soldier who would be killed in action in 1942 during World War II. He grew up in a Soviet orphanage after the rest of his family was killed in a 1948 earthquake, and he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1962. He rose from First Secretary of the Ashgabat City Committee to First Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkmenistan in 1985, and his party acquired a reputation for being one of the most hardline and unreformed parties in the USSR. In 1991, he supported the failed August Coup, but, following the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, he ensured that Turkmenistan broke away from the dying USSR. In December 1991, he founded the new Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, and he banned the Communist Party of Turkmenistan. Niyazov became the authoritarian strongman in charge of the one-party state of Turkmenistan, and he became known as one of the world's most totalitarian and repressive dictators. He even went so far as to rename months for details of his own biography among other things, and he embezzled and held $3 billion of Turkmenistan's money overseas. Niyazov died in office in 2006.